Like a true Zionist, I preferred my own homeland.
NOTE: While the June 1924 entry tells us that Dr. Klopstock asked, rather, obliged K not to reveal his secret to anyone outside the immediate family, in the above entry K apologizes to Brod for betraying him. He doesn’t tell his friend that his silence was one of the conditions that Dr. Klopstock had imposed as the price of his cooperation. Given this, Brod could have assumed that it was K’s choice to exclude Brod from his plan. (K.L.)
JULY 3, 1963. EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY K SYMPOSIUM
To celebrate my eightieth birthday, I attended a K symposium held in Prague to which scholars from all over the world came. In honor of the symposium, the communist authorities removed travel restrictions. People breathed easier for a few days. I would attend these conferences once in a while for my own amusement. Sometimes I would register with a shadow anagram of my name, like Malma or Tarta. Once I signed in as Gregor Samsa. The receptionist smiled at my little joke but said nothing, perhaps because she had nothing to say. But for my eightieth birthday, I registered as K. No first name, just K.
NOTE: K says nothing about the papers presented. Perhaps they did not impress him. See March 1965 entry. (K.L.)
SEPTEMBER 1964. RESEMBLANCE
After K’s death forty years ago, people occasionally gazed at me and said how much I resembled K. I’d smile and say, The men in our family have a tendency to resemble one another. Of course, no one said this to me immediately at K’s death because they were discreet and thought it might upset me, even though I was a distant cousin…* But of course later on, when my hair turned grey, then white, as did my Van Dyke beard, the longer the time passed from 1924, the less people mentioned any resemblance between me, Philippe Klein, and K.
* Rest of line illegible.
MARCH 1965. BEING K
I ask myself sometimes: Do I miss being K? The answer I give is No. For I am still K and will be. I had the pleasure of reading my obituaries, which few experience. We all would like to do this; it’s a natural, universal phenomenon, something like the dream we all have of falling. Having a split personality was rather amusing. Divorcing myself from myself and being an observer. Here and not here. There and not there. The K conferences are the most amusing. Occasionally, I even make an abrasive, challenging, or absurd comment from the floor. They know me as a nudnick, but a knowledgeable nudnick. I chuckle at the stupidities I hear and those I read in the International K Newsletter, where people pontificate with absolute authority and even are professors of K studies. But they haven’t the slightest idea of the Jewish, Hebrew, or Biblical content or allusions in my writing. They substitute guesswork, gall, arrogance, and bluff” for true understanding. Main thing is that they have PhDs, are called professor, and attend conferences.
Do I miss writing? Publishing? I was always of two minds on this. And that is no contradiction, no post-mortem,* forgive the pun, change of heart. Even Max will aver that early on I refused to show what I had written. It took lots of cajoling and pleading just to get me to show him a manuscript. When I did show it to Max, it was done with such trepidation, with such fear of inadequacy, that it put my stomach in knots and gave me a splitting headache. And I mean splitting. It was as if I was cleaved in two. Like the feeling a pane of glass must have in the spot where it cracks. But then, when Brod praised my piece, I didn’t mind reading it aloud to my coterie of friends.
I was never absolutely driven. Some people are driven to create. I wasn’t. And when I did write it was not necessarily to be published. And I didn’t spend the little free time I had at the writing desk.
On occasion, I was proud of my work, delighted with it. But most of the time I would be in bad humour, a pessimist about my abilities. Then I would think of creation as one of God’s mistakes, saying that the day God made man was one of His bad days. But now, at my age, despite the Holocaust, despite the German beasts — God, I can’t believe I wrote in German; I’m considered a German writer and have a reputation of being a great stylist in that accursed tongue; I should have written in Czech — despite all this I have become less cynical, more hopeful. My illness brought me to the realm where nightmare becomes real, and yet I survived and kept on surviving. My return home from the bourne from which no traveler returns was transformative.* Before my rebirth I always had difficulty falling asleep. Ever since then I sleep like a baby. And noise doesn’t bother me so much anymore.
*K writes this word in Latin in his Czech text. (K.L.)
*Written in English. (K.L.)
FEBRUARY 1976. READING
I do lots of reading. The International Herald Tribune in the library, and in my house a couple of Czech newspapers, a Hebrew vocalized weekly from Tel Aviv, a Yiddish paper published in Paris and the Prager Tagblatt. My bookshelves are full of my books, translated into various languages, and some large dictionaries: French, Italian, Hebrew, English, Yiddish, German, and Czech.
My books have been translated into more than thirty languages but I am most proud of Melech Ravitch’s translation into Yiddish of my novel, The Trial.
NOTE: The reader will observe that there is a great hiatus between March 1965 and February 1976, and then a leap to July 1983. It is possible that under the stress of Czech communism K did not want to record any entries. There are just a few scattered during those years, but we did not think they were significant enough to include them in this collection. (K.L.)
JULY 3, 1983. CENTENNIAL
I vowed that if I reached this date I would make nothing special of it. But as the date grew closer and closer I marveled at my blessed life and gave humble thanks for it. Today, my little family celebrated with me.
Perhaps I am too old for the following anecdote, but on second thought no one is too old for anything.
People always thought only books interested me. Everyone knows by now how much more multifaceted I am/was. Once a rabbi came up to me after services on the Sabbath between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur with the latest news. He said, Do you realize that when the Messiah comes there will be no need for desire?
I think I was eighty when he told me this.
No desire? I said, astonished, and added, I thought the Messiah is supposed to bring heaven down to earth, not hell.
That’s right, he said, paying no heed to my blasphemous remark. He sounded positively delighted with his glad tidings.
No sex? I said.
No sex, he exalted, bubbling with joy, as if the Messiah had already come.
Do me a favor, I said.
Yes, of course, Mr. Klein, anything.
Next time you speak to God, ask him to keep the Messiah bound a bit longer. He has waited a long time to be unbound. Let him wait a little longer.